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Marion L. Shane interview

Audio

AIC HISTORY ON TAPE
DRC MARION SHANE
Morphy: I'm talking with President Marion L. Shane,
of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania in his office,. It's February 10, 1973, and talking with Dr. Shane is Lawrence R, Murphy.
Dr. Shane: In 1960-61 I was professor of English
at South Dakots State College in Brookings, South Dakota, I had a aabatical coming for that year.
A colleague of mine in South Dakota State was in Cairo for the 59-60 academic year. He used to play poker with some a group of Americans in Cairo, One of them he played with, was Tom Robert who was in the English Department at that time, It turned out that Tom was going to take a leave of absence or was going to another position in I960, so this friend of ours whose name was Dr, Vern "alan, u sociologist, sent a letter of us in South Dakota. And I remember it came in the morning mail whent I carce Route for lunch. 'Yhile we were sitting for lunch my wife Dorethy and I said,
"Well if Tom Robert, in American literature is going to be gone for a year, why not send a cable and nee whether there might not he an opportunity to go as his replace­ment during my sabbatical." So between 10 minutes to 12 and 1 O'clock in the afternoon, we decided to send a cable and it was sent off and almost forgotten about As a result to that cable, we did hear from the New York Office, Br. Raymond McLain, the President at that time got in touch with us and things worked out. -There before we had been planning to go to Europe for the summer, we finally firmed up arrangements with Dr. McLain. Instead of going to Europe for the Summer we went to Europe in the Summer and then came to Egypt to A.H.C for the 1960—61 Academic Year.2
Dr, Murphy: How would you evaluate the curriculum or
programs before you started making changes or at the time that the self study was carried out?
Dr. Shane: Well, I guess my own dducational philosophy
tended to move toward establishing a relationship between what students learned in college or university work and what they need after graduation. I proceeded from this basic assumption, then to work with departmental chairman and to work with programs I guess raising this question over and over again, I found however in my work as Dean in 1962, that the immediate need was more in the area of clarifying decision making, and establishing regular procedure through which the operations of the University would be regularized. This was necessary in order to set up the kind of communication that the University badly needed at that time. And so I would say, initially my work was more internal and operational. In other words setting up regular meetings, getting dialogue going at various levels and getting some mutual confidence established in working with some of the schims that were very real within the University. Of course, I think our part of the mileau in which the University operate in this is a perrenial problem in all campuses. But I think it was markely so in Cairo at that time.
Dr. Murphy: Can you give some example of more specific
kinds of things that you did that might reflect the nature of the problems,AID. Well, in the last two years I had served as Chairman of a curriculum evaluation committee at South Dakota State where we had drawn up blueprints for the state college attempting to project program developments, and get a picture of where that institu­tion would be in ten years so that as committee meeting began to fee held in Cairo, I began to feed viewpoints and reactions to that ... I was in the English Department a nd Dr. Shoukry was the Chairman of the English DepartmA ment during that year, and she was extremely helping me in the committee assignments I worked on, primarily in the area of planning withintthe University. As a result of the experiences that year, Dr. McLaint talked to me about the possibility of my returning in a year or two in the capacity as dean of the university and so when I left after my nine months at AUC, it was an open question with either one of us as to whether this might turn out actually to occur. As it happened why it did. We had an especially cold winter in South Dakota in 61-62, so I was prompted to wite Dm Mclain that it was very cold, ani I wonder how things were in Cairo. So That’s how it workd out.
Dr. Murphy: Who was the dean during the period that yeu
were there?
Dr. Shane: Dr, Abdul Kader Nomani. Im not sure about
Abid's middle same (he was called Abid) but Dr. Narnani was dean of the faculties during that year and when I returned in 1962, then Dr, Namani went into teaching mathematics and was a great source of help. In fact, was very cooperative in helping me break into the office of dean.£ 3l o
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Dr. Sha.no: Well, ono of tho very roal problems in 1962 was tho relationship
between tho Social Research Center and tho Center for Arabic Studies. This was a difficulty during tho time that I was dean because the directors of tho centers reported to the President and tho dean of the faculties reported to the president; yet faculty served as teaching faculty in tho departments.
For example, members of faculty would be in the Department of Arabic Studies but they would also be in tho Center for arabic studies. They would be in tho Department of Sociology-Anthropology, and they would also be in tho Social Research Center. So there was a question of divided loyalty and divided commitments there and a question as to where priorities would exist. This was, perhaps, one of tho most difficult areas of priorities during all tho time that I was dean. I think my own reaction to this, and of course you could talk to others who were involved in it, but I felt that probably by tho third or fourth year that I was there that these difficulties had been pretty well ironed out. In other words we did a lot to try to establish communication, had regular meetings, and these kinds of things. So these are all procedural matters.
Now in terms of curriculum development, we made no major gains until about tho third year. Then in the third year, wo began to implement some changes which would tie more closely tho kinds of learning that tho students would undertake in tho university with their career needs outside. One of tho major thrusts was building up the ELI, the English Language Institute.
I forget the exact year, but t he start of this, and I think it was initiated First by Dr. Bartlett as president, was to work out a close working relationship with Columbia University in which we would welcome graduate assistants, graduate students working for their masters and doctorates to spend an internship at AUG working in the ELI. It was in that year also we had a
grant, i think from the Ford Foundation, to put in a language laboratorywliich is in existence there. So putting more emphasis and more expertise into tuning up the students in terms of their English language abilities was one of the major thrusts.
Dr. Murphy: Did you find while you were teaching English that this was
a problem area?
Dr. Sliane: Yes, and we also found in the records of our students, I
suppose a study could be made of this, that many students were weak in their freshman year. In fact, this vras a problem that I'm very pleased to see lias resulted in what is called the Freshman Year at AUC that students would become much stronger in their sophmore year. But they 3till had the low grades to contend and low grade point average throughout their undergraduate careers. Wo found another phenomenon that I don't know how this pattern would apply at the present time. We found our students initially hesitant to talk in class. They tended to want to be recepticles I guess of knowledge, rather than stating your own ideas. They cane to their courses readier to study their instructors than the subject matter at hand. We would get them worked out of this by the sophmore year and then it was difficult to keep them quiet. When they found they could talk, or even late in their freshman year, they would talk all the time, really without much thought as the what they wore saying and then maybe toward the end of the sophmore year and the beginning of the junior year, they would begin then to think more responsibly about what it vras they were saying.
Dr. Murphy: You said that the curriculum was aimed at providing students
vrith things they would need after graduation. How in the Egyptian mileau did you determine what student needs wore going to be?
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Dr. Shano: Well, I think that one of tho major thrusts that Dr. Bartlett
brought to the university when ho cane as president was to study tho
societal needs and then shape the curriculum to this. Tiro outstanding examples come to mind during the time that I uas dean. Of course English language is an obvious one, but the development of tho solid state scionco prograii in the Department of Science and Chemistry (I forget tho name
prior to solid state, but it uas changed to solid state and then tho solid
state program uas developed). Based upon glass, and glass uas chosen as tho solid state because the rau materials silicone and sand are available in Egypt, and it uas seen as an area for research and development that uould relate very closely to the.Egyptian economy. The second area was the deve­lopment of an administration program in the Deparment of Economics-Political Science. This uas both business and political administration; in other words, business and public administration. The program uas designed to offer the kinds of courses that were badly needed by Egyptian middle management, both from business and from government, and I think that the success of the program can be seen in the largo number of Egyptians uho are brought into it. Nou one of the challenges there was,of course, the matter of English langiago competency of couse, because ue uould have graduates of the national univer­sities applying for this program. This uas one of the obstacles that load to be worked out, and it was an added pressure for the ELI to deal with these graduate students. But this uas taken on and the program started, I think roughly, about in 1965. I've had conversations with it's architect,
Dr. Lauren Tesdale subsequent to that time and apparently it wont very well.
Dr. Murphy: It's very successful nou.
Dr. Sliane: Yes, this is my understanding. But those are two examples. I3&3
sight point out another one: tho arabic language requirement was when I vent there, two years of classical arabic which was one of the unhappiost requirements within the institution* This was amended in 1963 or 1964 to a year of coloquial arabic or classical depending up on tho student. In other words, this was really geared more to area of use so that non-thanaweya- amma students could take colloquial arabic which, of course, was of groat use to them.
Dr. Murphy: Did you have way of comrauicating or exchanging curriculum
ideas with tho national universities, or hov did you relate your curriculym planning to what they were doing?
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Dr. Shane: Well, let me report what I sav take place, and then probably in
dialogue with others you could may bo go into how these kinds of things were engineered. In the early 1960's the university was more self-contained than it was in the mid-1960's. By self contained, I meant, I would say this in throe ways. First tho intercourse between the AUC and tho American Embassy was mimimal, and it was discouraged. Relationships between AUC and the national universities was also mimimal, and tho relationships between AUC and the governmental agencies was minimal. Our contacts wore usually contacts where they were concerned about taxes or concerned about books we had in the library: this kind of contact. Toward the middle of the 1960's this was thrown open and the university adopted a more open stance to its en­vironmental society. By open stance, courtesy visits were paid to tho Rectors to Cairo University, Ein Shams and A1 Azhar. Tliis was considered part of tho procedure. We began to open dialogues with faculty. AUC has
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always used, at least in my experience with the institution, had used adjunct a ^ointments. Part-time faculty members would come from the national univer­sities, but this was on a bind of a yon so- cl level, and it uas an attractive offer for thou because the salaries at AUG wore usually hi her than those at the national universities., but by the mid-19&Cfsf there uas an encourage out for developing relationships between AUG and povornnontal agencies, and the Amo- rican embassy, and the national universities. You eiay liavo rim into this in your other dialogues, but this really portrayed a significant development in
the life of the university, and it correlated very closely with tb
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the university to shape its proprams in directions that would feed needs in the contextuol society. I found these developments very compatible in :ay own educational philosophy. I should point out tliat the Social desearch Center, even from earlier years, had been engaged in projects: the bubian project, the relocation, the resettle:lent study for villages tliat wore poinp to be flooded cut by the Aswan Dan: were pr opr a is of this hind but they were in the research area of the institution. The rove durinp the 60*s was to shape nearly all of the programs in the direction of needs of the contextual society. In my own opinion, looking how in hindsipht at those developments, I believe it is one or the reasons that the :diversity lias been allowed to continue under the bpyptian . ••overnment. It *3 providing expertise and competencies that are badly needed by this society.
Dr. burphy: In addition the mow mi oprams, do you think there uas a pualitativo
chanpo in the educational urogram?
Dr. oiiano: Jell, one thrust tliat wo attempted to oncourape out of the dean1 s
office and tlirouph the do iartmental chairman was to mlaeo increased emphasisJ-o T5
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up on teaching, and working with tho students and moving out of the more or loss lecture syndrome. How much of this took hold is a little difficult to say. In general, I would say the results were favorable and whore this occur­red, I tend to think there was a qualitative difference that tho students very much felt.
Dr. Murphy: Are you suggesting that there were problems in implementing this,
then?
Dr. Shane: Well, I think it called for now approaches, and new attitudes, and
now techniques tliat are not always too easy to implement in an educational
environment. I would say wo made some moves in that direction; not as many as wo would have liked to. But I do feel that there was a heightened sensitivity
to the needs of the students as a result of these kinds of emphases and dialo­gues
related to them.
Dr. Murphy: Do you think tliat the problems you faced in this area are es­sentially
the ones you would face in any American school or were there special difficulties caused by being in Egypt?
Dr. Shane: I think tliat ... the- same kinds of problems are faced in an
American institution but the severity of the problem was perhaps greater in AUG because the students had come through the examination system, the GCE, or the thanawoya-amma, and they were geared toward examinations and being judged by their system. They were very what I would call grade conscious. Therefore, grades were always central in their own minds, in the minds of tho students, and so there would be more difficulty in making this approach with Egyptian students than perhaps with students from other cultures or from cultures whore there hadn't been such an emphasis on examinations, you see in tho, pre-college years, pre-university years.-10-
DTo Murphy: Do you think the quality of students increases or decreases or remains about the same or did you see any noticable changes in the kinds of students who entered and who stayed long enough to graduate?
Dr« Shane: During the time that I was there, I think there
was a definite shift lavry, in the economic levels of the students, partly because of the process of sequestration1# and some of the students between I960 and 1966 went through some very traumatic experences because their family fortunes were confiscated by the government,, They jvould come to school on a Monday and have trepidations things happen btit theyTd come by Wednesday and find everything that the family had, would be wiped out. The family then would be subsisting for a while just on the amount of money the sequestration officials would dole out them. So I would say, in general that the economic- social level of our students tended to drop during this year, these years, which then placed more dependence up on scholarship funds and means of helping them get through the university,. This was a general characteristic throughout the Egyptian society during the 60*s and probably has continued to this time.
Dr. Murphy: How about it terms of motivations?
Dr. Shane: Well, I would say that this is a rather nebulous factor of nail down in a few words. My impression at this time, looking back on it, is that we had I was there from 60-66. Toward the end of that time students tended to look at their education in more realistic terms. I ce.n give one example without naming of the student and it isn£t necessary to name the student. We had a very capable young lady student, from an upper middle chss family or an upper blass family,231
perhaps at one time, who never got above Cfs in the American University. When time came for her graduation she wanted to get into graduate school in the United States, and had difficulty. We had a committee of faculty writing recommendations at this time, and she had trouble with the committee. In fact had difficulty because of her grade point average of getting the support of this faculty committee. However, with the skills that she had, she was able to get into a very good graduate school in the United States. Within three years she was getting her doctoral degree in the United States with very good grades. The point is that while she was at AUG she just studied enough to get by, and then when her roles changed and she got into a doctoral program in the states, then she really put on the coals and did the job, and she could have done this back in AUC. Now the motivation change for this individual as her social eaonomic factors changed, and I think this was a factor working through the university. In other words 'where in the early 60 ’ s where many going to a University like AUG was just sort of the thing to do, by the mid 60’s it wq,s a difference between making a living and not making a living or finding the kind of life that one wanted or not finding the kind of life that one wanted. And so these external factors affected the way the students tended to look at the University. I don’t know whether that factor is still working now or not, but I think it was working during those years.
Dr. Murphy: You mentioned communication within the university
Could you described the committee system, and the way it functioned or how it developed during the period.
Dr. Shane: Only because the years have dimmed some of my
memories, although it isn’t too long ago. I remember that we used to meet regularly with the departmental chairman.
This was working meeting. We also had, I think, a curriculum committee and may be the departmental chairman’s committee
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operated as a curriculum committee but these were long working sessions where much really of the nitty gritty of thrashing out program proposals, and looking at developments and budgets were carried out. Then we had the appointment, Pro­motion and Tenure Committee, which was about as thorough a review of the application of the guidelines of appointment, promotion and tenure as Ifve aver worked with feecause all appointments, promotions and tenure went through the APT committee which was composed of the directors of the centers and the divisional (heads) equitably. I think that was a good result of that procedure. ItTs the only institution that 1ve been in where this has gone through a committee of that kind and it has some merits. It has some demerits in that it is a tremendous amount of work. 6ne thing that we attempted to do at that time was that whem a case came to the APT committee they had pretty full information about it, and they had comparative salary figures and they had the whole thing pretty w^ll laid out, so I would see there were pretty good proffe- ssional judgments made in the matter of placement, the matter promotion, and the matter tenure.
Dr. Murphy: This leads into another major area of concern of yours and that would be staffing and personnel. Could you talk about that in a general sort of way?
Dr. Shane: Yes, I was really asked to come out as the Dean
of the faculties to strengthen the quality of the academic Xerograms and to develop graduate programs. Those were the two major assignments that I had so in the staffing picture we tended I went whie out which was in.'. 1962, the staffing was truncated and disjunctive in a sense in that Dr. McLain, about February or March of that year, had a coronary and was hospitalized. I was deeply involved in work that I was doing at South Dakota State, but what I did was to take some time off on week ends and during vacation to get into New York to see him in the hospital and talk with him by telephone, and pull the staffing picture together and really carry on
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the staffing that he had intended to do. Beginning in 163 wo then laid out the staffing was tied into progran relationships which were developed in the United States. In other words,we not only would talk staff with other various institutions but we would talk ideas related to graduate program development, and we kept asking "How can we develop programs that will produce students who can function efficiently in the kind of society they'll be going into?" * So there was a duel purpose in the trips I took to the states.
Dr. Murphy: Gan you give a specific example, maybe, of the way in which
these inter-institutional relationships developed?
Dr. Shane: Well, Dr. Bartlett in 1963, proposed the Visiting Professor arrangement whereby institutions like Indians or Iowa, or any others that might be interested would take one of their outstanding men, or individuals in a given field and send them over to AUC for two years. Then they would take a department, and the one that comes to mind is the Department of English at the University of Iowa, which had a very good reputation at the time, and the;, would rotate their senior faculty members to Cairo.
We would set up an apartment, and we would make arrangements there to bring them in and rotate them. I remember Dr. Alexander Kern was one of the first to come over on that basis. Alexander Kern was so successful in the English Department and such a strong member within the university that second year ho was there, he was elected chairman of the faculty.
And so the kind of contribution that he made was over and beyond the kind of contribution we would got with a normal faculty appointment. Not onlythat, his wife, Joan Korn, was an associate professor, of English, was an excellent teacher and very well known in her own field. So wo had almost double reward. But wo looked at these possibilities as we talked.... in other works, ongoing relationships. Instead of a staffing pattern where we would go to see isolated applicants in various parts of the country. V/e talked, for example, about administration programs with Brigham Young, with Stanford, with schools where this kind of program had already established a reputation. And then We'd bring the ideas back and channel them into our program development in the states. Then Dr. Barlett developed a relationship with Indiana University which is still going on. This was done through Herman Wells who was then chancellor....
Dr. Murphy: So these were generally then quite sucessful.
Dr. Shane: And then wo tended, as we staffed in this pattern, and we had
key people and some of the strongest universities in the states advising us, we were then able to look at a roster of applicants which was far dif­ferent from the roster where wo simply put advertisements out or list the positions out to placement bureaus, etc. Of course, wo did that also. But I would say that I was very pleased with the quality of faculty appointments. We tended to got people with more and more experience both in teaching and in research coming out.
Dr. Murphy: Was recruiting done in any different way than it would be for
an American university, a stateside school?cSS/
Dr. Shano: I think so bocauso, for example, tho role of tho wife was very important. We would always try to interview tho wife as well as the faculty member, because if that wife came over there and didn't like Cairo, it didn't matter how good tho faculty member was he had a problem and,tho univer­sity had a problem. I don't know how successful we were in doing this kind of screening. I don't third: that are any sure guidelines for it, but I suppose after going through soferal dozen interviews and then seeing many of these people come out and hue, one gets a sense a feel about now people raight react to a foreign situation. One experience I might mention, and this I had only second hand: one family came to AUC through the Far East
and after they had seen Tokyo, and Hong Kong and Singapore and ... Now Delhi, Cairo looked like a modern city to them. They were not dismayed by anything they mot in Egypt during the time that they were thoro. When our faculty had come through Paris and Rome or London and Paris to Cairo, they tended to feel a little dismayed. In other words, there was an orientation that took place when they came tl^o other way around. I don't know how signi­ficant this would be, but it was true in that one case.
Dr. Murphy: Did you develop techniques for trying to explain to applicants
what Egypt was like? Did you ever show films, for example?
Dr. Shano: We didn't show films or slides. In my own interviewing I would try to talk about negative aspects of living in Egypt. In addition wo did a lot of work on the documents that were sent out. I think Dr. McLain had done a tremendously capable job of working up tho documents that were given to me in 1960. We continued to adapt those documents to the conditions as they were changing in Egypt, so that any body who road them thoroughly I think, had a pretty good picture of what to expect. Of course, our inter­views tended to supplement those with details. One thing we never tried towo novor triod to do was pressure somebody into coming out, because that,
I think would have been self-defeating. At least the technique that I used. If there was a meeting of minds and the people wore interested, wo tended to lay everything on the lino for them. We talked about customs problems.
We talked about censorship problems. We talked about dirt and wo talked about flies on food, and you know these kinds of things. I think as result the screening was fairly good... because the majority of the people who came out tended to stay for some time. In fact, some of them, I guess, are still there.
Dr. Murphy: Do you think AUC was competitive in terms of precruiting
facility?
Dr. Shane: Larry, never underestimate the Pyramids and the Sphinx. They
balanced everything out. In terms of finances, no. We simply wore not competitive during the time that I was recruiting. For one thing, people did not understand what it cost to love in Egypt. We wore very explicit. You could not, at that time, live anymore cheaply in Egypt than you could in the United States. I think in about 1960, there was a feeling you could, but inflation started to catch up by then and by the time I was recruiting in 1962, we laid that right on the line. Don't expect to save any money living in Egyptj it will cost you just as much to live there as it will in the states.
Dr. Murphy: What then was the motivation for faculty that took jobs,
coming to Egypt?Dr. Shane: Well, I think so. Coming to Egypt was one of the factors,
but I think also there was also an interest in and an excitement about the kind of institution AUC was. I think they liked the Ideas. Wherever we could find compatibility between what we were trying to do and what the faculty member wanted to try to do, this was the bonding element.
Wo had a lot who applied who wanted to see the lyramids, but that in it­self was not the basis on which the appointments were made.
Dr. Murphy: Was recruiting a major abstacle for you or did this combine
together to make it reasonably easy to fill the slots with capable people?
Dr. Shane: I would say that always had more applicants than positions,
and wo always had good selectivity in applicants. One or two exceptions: sociology was tight for a time; it was everywhere. However, positions that wore filled were filled with good people... Economics was tight too awhile, but again there wo were fortunate.
Dr. Murphy: To what extent did the Now York office work with your acti­vities?
Hoxj did they fit into the picture?
Dr. Shane: At that time, wo used them quite a bit in scheduling and in
setting up interviews. They played a fairly important role, because they were the go-between, communications in the states and AUG. Wo always had difficulty of mail problems. You never could be certain that a letter would get through. Sometimes wore bettor than others. Often wo were surprised. We could count on about six to seven day delivery at that time. The Now York office was handling all the finances then, and it was a fairly busy operation. It changed locale while I was out there. It moved from the Elat Iron Building to the United Nations. I think the character of theNot./ York office probably altered during those years to sono extend in that it tended to be more streamlined. Toward the end of my time with the univer­sity. And I would say in my last two staffing trips, I probably, was in the New York office only half a day, during the time I was over, and the rest of the time I would be on the road.
Dr. Murphy: Gan you describe a recruiting trip?
Dr. Sliano: Work on a recruiting trip would begin three to four months
before the trip would take place, because wo would really start the year before in the late spring of the year before laying out the rough descrip­tions and then in the fall wo would firm them up. Then we would send out a list of the positions that would be needed by the next fall. This was sent out to placement bureaus at the top 50 universities in the United States. Then correspondence would begin to cone in mid November, late November or December. Then the trip would take place in mid-January say or early February, but usually in January. This would be based or on cor­respondence that would come inj it would be based on program inquiries and program interests. I would then come into the states, int New York usual­ly, and then move lut from there and typical one I swing out Indiana, Iowa, USC, Stanford, University of Washington, etc. At that time, I didn't do much in Minnesota. I'd go to Michigan State, I'd go to Cornell. I didn't get into the New England states much in the ones I happened to take. That would be a typical trip in the course of that time. I'd got into Chicago for a couple of days and during that time, I'd see maybe 30 individuals.
And probably two-thirds of them to would be applicants and the rest I'd betalking to then in toms of program developments. I’d say that's about the patterns.
Dr. Murphy: Did you got involved in any student recruitment?
Dr. Shane: No, I didn't work vrith the student recruitment. This was done
primarily by the admissions office at AUC. I was working primarily with faculty.
Dr. Murphy: We might talk about some of the people that you worked with
and what kinds of individuals they wore or what contributions they made.
I suppose Dr. McLain is a good starting point.
Dr. Shane: Dr. Me Iain was the kind of president, I think, who had clearly
defined pliilosophy of education in his own mind. He had come out of the ministry, and had been a very successful president of Transylvania before he went to AUC. He saw the development of the university carried out I think largely through the leadership of the president... And of course its significant that when he first when out there ... perhaps in 1955-56 because at the end of his first academic year, the university had to be evacuated...
A bus was called and the faculty was put on the bus. He was the last one on, and just before the bus left, ho stopped off and was going to stay with the university. He was that kind of man. The precarious nature of that first year's experience and all that was involved in the Suez crisis of 56 I think made him feel the development of the university had to watched over very closely. I'd say he was the kind of administrator that tended to work very directly with people. So tliat when the university was small, as it was in 1956, this created no groat problem because you could handletilings on a more or loss personal basis. The difficulty for him in the early 60*s was that the university was growing in size, and the pressures on the president's office under this kind of an arrangement were tremen­dous. I don't know exactly how ho stood this kind of pressure. The symptom of it would be ho would have to see people about all kinds of things, so the pressure just increased. The type of administration which was ideal for the university in the mid 50's placed increased pressure on the president in the early 60's. In other words, Dr. McLain's abilities wore so high, and his personal charm so great, but the demands on him wore correspondingly great, so that he just couldn't keep up with the kinds of personal relationships that had to go on to keep the university going. So there was a kind of pressure on the seams under this kind of an arrangement. I will say this about him: he was a person of absolute integrity, but he
was pushed and pushed and pushed.
I feel that strides made by the university at this time were tremen­dous. There's just no doubt about it. He moved them in terms of its relationship with sources of influence within the United States and in terms of stature within the Arab world to new levels. This prepared tho base and prepared the framework for someone like Dr. Tom Bartlett. What I'm giving you now is a personal interpretation of the way the adiainistra- tion and thrusts of the university that were developed during the times that I was associated with.
Dr. Bartlett came there from tho United Nations where ho had spent seven or eight years working with Cabot Lodge and with Adlai Stevenson, both, where there was a tremendous amount of give and take and a great deal of flexibility of position and ability to work with a variety of situa­tions and a delegation of responsibility. Under Dr. Bartlett AUC becamein a sense a little bit... a model of the United Nations. We began to initiate dialogue with the world outside the university and the contextual society and to keep this dialogue going and not worry about disagreements as we were doing. This was Dr. Bartlett’s stylo and he did the sane thing within the university. As a result, there was a greater delegation of responsibility.....
Dr. Murphy: There's an obvious generational change between the two men.
Did that lead to some differences?
Dr. Shane: Yos, it did. No differences between Dr. Bartlett and Dr.
McLain because when Dr. Bartlett came in Raymond McLain want to the Now York office as chancellor, really put his efforts into that pound endowment which was being worked through congress. Of course ho did that job with individuals like Jim Barco and others helping him in a way that probably on one else could have done. This was an amazing accomplishment.... It was arranged this way that Tom Bartlett would work within the university, develop the university in his own stylo and approach. I was not privy to any sources of conflict between the two individuals, whether they occurred,
I wouldn't know.
Dr. IiUrphy: How about in their style of operation?
Dr. Shane: In their style of operation, I would say there is a definite
difference of philosophy: the one that came out of the UN and the one that grew out of the tradition of what I would say that I would call a personal leader. Of the personal leader type, Dr. McLain was one of the most capableand efficient individuals I've over worked with. I have seen this pattern in other institutions of higher education where size and complexity of problems... breaks down the personal system of leadership. I've felt this put great pressure on Dr. McLain.
Dr. Murphy: You noted before that you had worked with Dr. MeLane shortly
after he'd had his coronary. Can you describe that series of events in the way it may have affected him or his administration?
Dr. Shane: After his coronary, he left at the end of that academic year—
I don't remember the timing of it. Ho had to take it easy after that....
I don't think he changed his approach nor would I have expected him to.
Ho was still...*
Dr. Murphy: He drove himself hard after the coronary?
Dr. Shane: Yes he did. I won't say that he was a bad boy, but ho certainly
kept hkept his eye on his job and pursued it with a great deal of vigor.
But I think also, he was very sensible about his regime. He watchod this as carefully as ho could.Dr. Shano: Tliis was part of his whole plans of giving the university
recognition, I think, at points of influence and at points of fund giving. This was very succesfully done by him. As a matter of fact, ... the pound endowment fund which came into oxistance, (I guess it is really just begin­ning to function now in 1973). The thinking about that was started as a result of the self-study which came out must have come out in 61-62 which was a voluminous job. That placed the American University — I think had a great deal of influence with many individuals in the State Department.
There may bo other points of view about this. In other words, that was a tremendous document and it took a lot of work and a lot of things wore pulled together into it. This was Dr. McLain's brain child. A lot that was done duuring his administration I would say that he was really stemmed out of that very capable in this area.
Now Dr. Bartlett brought a different kind of strength to the university which was one of working with the relationships ... with the environmental society, around the university the opening of dialogue with external individuals and agencies and points of influence in Egyptian society, and expanding the dialogue internally.
Dr. Murphy: Were you involved with construction, particularly the
science building which was going on during most of that time?
Dr. Shano: I was there in 1960 when the cornerstone was laid and it was
finished ... three months after I left in June of 1966 for the opening of the solid state conference that Dr. Adly Bishy held. It took them six years to build that. So all the time I was with AUC. That building was going on in the corner of the campus. That's the major problem. That's the major construction that occurred.Dr. Murphy: Was there pressure from the academic viewpoint for increased
facilities? How did that relate to your academic plan?
Dr. Shane: Pressure from my office for increased classroom space, I don’t remember the details. We expanded the undergraduate student body from roughly 500 to 4B0 to 900. We doubled it during the time I was there, and wo had about 14 general classrooms. The purchase of the Greek school which was Dr. Tom Bartlett taking a tremendous chance in the early 60’s.
That was a very courageous step on his part to pull in the complex of the Greek school. It relieved a tremendous amount of pressure for us, because as we increased students, wo had to increase faculty. We were hurting for office space and we were hurting for classroom space. We were expanding library holdings for the new undergraduate programs, so we load a whole concatenation of pressures related to facilities as this was accuring. We saw the Solid State Science with that now Science building as helping Tremendously if that would ever get finished.
Dr. Murphy: Before we got away from this, are there other individuals that
you think ought to have special mention either in administration or faculty of one sort of another.
Dr. Murphy: If wo were to start a list of individuals that should have
special mention, it would be far too long. I was sorry that one of the persons you couldn’t talk to was Dr. Iauron Tesdale because of his work in building the administration program and the department of economics— political science.... He was really the mentor for that; the one who carried it through to successful completion. And I would say that this was a verynotworthy accomplishment. Ono anocdoto I flight pass on to you regarding this particular point about how an institution grows and how it gets ideas. In 1963 I think, the spring of '63, wo had four faculty members sit down in my office who played the game of "What If". We said "Let's forgot about budget", because we wore struggling with budget at the time, wo said "let's not think about budget let's think about what we would like to see happen at the institution. Let's not talk about hoi; we work to get it happen, or what logistics would have to be carried out. What are some of the things we'd like to see happen?" Wo sat there for about an hour and a half and brainstormed. We came up with a list of about six things. Of the six things we had on the list, five of then wore operational within two years. That's something I've always romeborod ... and something I learned out of ay Cairo experience. Administration when I went out there was such a tacky job and I use the word tacky in the sense that we had brush fires all the time, job. You'd spend all your time and effort putting out brush fires. You'd work all day putting out brush fires and you'd leave a stack of undone things on your desk and you'd come in the next morning and start in on them.
So all one's time was spent at reacting to brush fires. And one of my thrusts was to procedurizo things, to take care of four fifths of the brush fires at least so then we could look at some basic directions. I would say the first two years there was spent primarily in this kind of thing. This session whore we did the brainstorming was one of the most fruitful meetings that I had during the first two years.
Dr. Murphy: Can you talk in a little more detail about the specific units and
how they developed. For example, you mentioned the ELI before—how much of that sort of detail you remember after all these years?Dr. Shano: I think that tho difficulty with the ELI ua3 first teaching English as a second language, and we had quite a bit of dialogue about whether it's bo English as a foreign language or English as a second language; tho Columbia approach tended to emphasize English as a second language. First it is a difficult job, and I think people outside the field tend to over-simplify it and wonder why if you've got all that time and all that equipment, this cannot bo done efficiently. Well, I think anyone who has worked closely with ELI can may be not be so critical about what occurs, because it's a very difficult process: learning a second language. I think, especially for students who are based in Arabic. When our students had both Arabic and French as many of our middle class students had, it was a simpler job but still it was.
Secondly, just having a few teachers and not having a variety of theoretical input into it was also difficult. I thinl: there we were helped by getting leadership from Columbia in the program. Without mentioning individuals, I think this is exactly what occurred. Wo had some very hard working directors in ELI—three or four during the time that I was there. The Columbia program gave us some sense of direction.
Dr. Ilurphy: Did the graduated program of the Masters degree in TEFL develop
out of this need then?
Dr. Shane: Well Columbia had a TEFL (I don't know whether they call it TEFL)
i *
but they had a masters program, and they were building it up about the time we wanted to work this arrangement out with them, and they saw it as a natural for them. We had very competent young people come out as (I forget what vie called them) instructors or graduate assistants, but they came out and actual­ly taught in the ELI. And of course they wore channelling in tho latest theoriesthat the Aliens wore teaching at Columbia.
Dr. Murphy: How about in the field of Arabic studies?
Dr. Shane: In the field of Arabic Studies, the change or the curriculum
in language teaching moved it toward the colloquial, and we had some excellent young people who if ere teaching colloquial Arabic, not only to our students but teaching it to groups from outside the university. A lot of embassy people, for example, began to cone to these. This was a very successful program. Then in Arabic Studies itself, of course, the research was carried out of the directors office. And we began to develop more liasons with the Egyptian universities the mid 60s in this areas. Although there were political overtones to that as I think you could well understand.
Dr. Murphy: Did the acquisition of the Creswell collection lead to some
changes in that program? That had been acquired by the time you came.
Dr. Shane: That was acquired, but in that. I dont know whether Dr. Creswell is still alive now. We had quite a bit of research being carried on in Islamic Art and Architecture as a result of Dr. Creswell1s influence and prestige. However, this was not vitally tied in with the curriculum of the university. This was primarily a research project. This consisted of research projects which were developed out of the Center for Arabic Studies. Again there wore some political overtones to the development of that also.
Dr. Murphy: Another research area is the SRC. How did that develop?would have this kind of information for you. As I indicated one of the initial difficulties that I faced in the deans office was to build a viable department of sociology-anthropology and then get it on a working relationship with the SRC. This was really not effective until Dr. Abdullah Lutfiyyah came in as chairman of the Department of Sociology-Anthropology. The department began to acquire some stature and then departmental members began to tie into research that was carried on by the SRC. own feelings about the research projects are that the SRC. They were very much oriented to needs that the Egyptian got involved in government and Egyptian society faced. But I also can assure you that was that. They had to proceed very cafefully with their research, and make sure that they had clearance not only with the government officials but from the villages they were working with and make sure they had clearance.
Bob Fernea, who was the director of the project for the Nubian research of course had to deal very much with this part of it and of course Dr. Laila Hamamsy tried to keep the lines of communication open with government officials with whom they had to work. I-£y own feeling is that the research there tended to be very much need oriented. Ofcourse the SRC lead some fairly sizeable grants for this reason, some very good Ford Foundation grants and, I think, good working relationship with AID.
Dr. Murphy: You mentioned the solid state physics program before.
Is there anything you'd like to add to that?
Dr. Shane: Well, I would say, there, that Dr. Beshai built an extremely strong
program. One academic development that was in the picture as I went out in 1962 was the development of graduate programs with a six-year continuum in
Dr. Shane: I don't know the early background of that, and Dr. Laila Ilamarasy
mind. In othor words you'd have a laddor that would start at tho freshman
/ 1
year and built right up through the masters level. This was tho concept that I moved into as I went out there. The Solid State program is probably tho one that best exemplifies that in that the curriculum change was made in tho second or third year that pretty tied much tied the student into a science locI:-3tep probram through those six years. I myself am not sure ... this was the best way to do it, and I'm not sure what Dr. Beshai's views on this at this time would be. I went through the administrative counsel, and it was adopted by tho university. But whether those scientists now are able to have tho breadth of interest and deal with human relationships as hopefully scien­tists should do is a question that Dr. Boshai would have to maybe comment upon.
Dr. Murphy: There were also some developments in the library during this
period. Can you talk about those? I believe this would coincide with the Hill House.
Dr. Shane: That was done subsequent to my being there although there ms
a remodelling occur. Woe we had a succession of directors also. This is an old tradition in tho library.
Dr. Murphy: Why? Is there a particular personnel problem in getting libra­rians tio go to Egypt? This seems to have started about in 1920 and hasn't stopped yet.
Dr. Shane: I don't know and I never really came to any conclusion in my own
mind about that situation. I would suppose, tliat librarians may bo in tightdemand in the United States and this is a factor. I just don't know. I know that was not a central thrust in the staffing. It was always a kind of a problem that was never solved. I don't know whether this is a structural problem or not. I can't oven remember whether the librarian reported to the dean. I think ho did. If we got a very experienced librarian, wo could got him for only about a year. This was problem, of course.
Dr. Murphy: Was there concern about the size and quality of the library in
light of the upgrading of academic probrams?
Dr. Shane: This was a question, of course, and as we moved into our graduate
programs, we had to push library holdings in those areas. 0 course, getting books into Egypt was a challenge. But I felt that enough resources were put into this, so that we did not have difficulty getting in aproval for our three graduate programs and they were in English, Sociology-Anthropology and Economics- Political Science. Wo were able to get those approved.
Dr. Murphy: There seemed to have been special problems in Political Science
and Economics. Can you talk about that program a little?
Dr. Shane: Well, at different times I think there were. I don't really have any clear picture of what's occurred in recent years. As I think one of the problems was Economics in that it was a difficult subject to teach to Egyptian students. It wa3 a very difficult subject.
Dr. Hurphy: I think Political Science has somewhat the same difficulties,
too, probably.heard Egyptian students talk about examples. Economics textbooks would take examples from. American life and civilization, and Egyptian students would complain about this. The instructors would complain about it that tho Egyptiahs had difficulty seeing what the examples... The examples were more complicated than the concepts they were supposed to explan an American Cul­tural background and, of course, the economics was highly theoretical... I don't have any memory of difficulty in that department, major difficulty.
We may have had in 62 or 63 but Dr. Tesdale came in 63 or 64 and moved toward tho development of the graduate programs I think with a great deal of success.
Dr. Murphy: Was there political sensitivity?
Dr. Shano: Oh, yea. One of the factors we had to deal with hero was visa
approval with foreign faculty. Wo were under, and AUC probably still is, a quota system. I don't think we had any faculty members turned back except one instance. We brought an individual in. I didn't, because it was a Director of Continuing Education but I think ho was brought in by Dr. Hanna Risk, no by the President, A director of continuing education or adult education. His visa was denied. We had no other visas denied for faculty coming in during those years. Now, wo had a couple faculty leave in a hurry but these wore other matters. They didn't deal with political sensitivity.
Dr. Murphy: Is tills a problem that affects the Political Science department especially. Did tho Egyptians seem wary of Americans talking about things political?
Dr. Shano: I didn't got that in my office. It's tho one subject where I
Dr. Shane: Wo liad none of that, and probably because of the sensitivity of
the faculty to those hinds of concerns. Ho this was not a problem.
Dr. Murphy: How about the English program, you must have boon rather close to that....the development of the graduate program at least.
Dr. Shane: ... There wore some concerns about it, in my own mind. I'd be interested in Doris Shukry's comments about it because it tended to lead to a masters degree in English Literature as such, and then the Question of what the market place would bo for individuals who came out of this. You see it was literature oriented. While the need is tremendous in a society for teaching English as a second or foreign language. The need was not so great for the teachers of literature as such. I don't know how that lias turned out in terms of the basic basis that I spoke about and that is relating to career and life needs after granduation.
Dr. Murphy: It's continued alone in that direction until rather recently and
when I loft, the English Department was involved in a curriculum revision more in the direction of comparative literature rather than American literature. They were talking about bringing some French ,,,•
Dr. Shane: This would make a great deal of sense, I think. I myself would
feel this would probably.have more liability than one tied into.Bnglish lit­erature.
Dr. Murphy: The graduate program has been very small in English.Dr. Shano: Well, it was... During tho thrusts that I'm talking about,
tho numbor of English majors tended to docroaso as I remember ...
Dr. Murphy: How numbor conscious wore you?
Dr. Shano: What wo noodod to do was to got some points of comparison.
In order to chock out student response to programs. Also in order to deal with deal with staffing requests, we needed some background in staf­fing. This is why these figures wore worked up during those years. What my office attempted to was build up the records so we could do our plan­ning for tho future on the basis of what had happened in the past. This was one of tho first lessons in administration; to see that this would occur. So an emphasis was put on it.
Dr. Murphy: The university has traditionally emphasized a rather close
faculty-student relations and a rather small classes. Was this done in­tentionally or were you worried by tho smallness of certain programs?
Dr. Shano: Worried only in the sense that; in other words we didn't
really take a quantitative approach to decision making, but worried in tho sense that if classes wore small, maybe students weren't supporting them and ask questions on that basis. But I would say at AUC we didn't ask hard questions about it, because we couldn't make the changes as ra­pidly as perhaps one might at an American university.
Dr. Murphy: Perhaps to conclude, you made some particular comments oarli,
about the particular educational significance of AUG in terms of giving people a broader outlook. Can you talk about that a bit? ...Dr. Sliane: Looking now backwards to my time at AUG and then intorproting
also the kinds of messages I'm getting from the university, (I get bul­letins and fliers and occassionally an alumni communication). I am more enthusiastic than over with what the institution is trying to do, because I see it as a meeting ground between a product of western culture and a society oriented to eastern culture. One of the most affective situations that I went through at AUC, and I went through it many times: alumni would be individuals I hadn't met before, and I didn1t know the circumstances under which they had attended the university, but they'd have a look in their eyes and they would have a feeling about the university that at first I couldn't analyze. But as this experience repeated itself, I began to put an interpre­tation on it. And it would something like this: one of the basic distinctions between the oriental cultural approach to life, especially in Egypt... is that you don't trust the system. You build your life and your assurances and your values on personal relationships. And they would come to the univer­sity with this point of view. What they would find at their four years in a university is that hero is an attempt to set up a system where regulations and a sense or order is adhered to. You can trust the order. This was the look that I would see in the aluiani when they'd come back. This is I think one of the central thrusts of the university in the Arab view. Maybe it creates disjunctions in the students that go through it. But I feel until east and west reach some land of raproachmont on this point, it's going to be very difficult for (end of tape). There'd be a hunger in the eyes and in the statements of these people for this concept of order.
If you talk to an Egyptian about how he lives in Egyptian society, ho builds on these personal relationships. He doesn't trust the law. Ho doesn't trust the government. He doesn't trust the tax system, and the reasonho doesn't is that his whole cultural heritage lias boon run by tho foreigners. Of course his own people are in there now, but that doesn't change tho fooling the residual fooling that's come out of generations of this and ages of this, a millonium of this. Yet at tho American University, students tine and again would see decisions made on tho basis of the system. When students would bring pressure to bear for grades, for graduation and this hind of thing.
Wo load one student I happened to follow through from freshman to senior. Wo had an ambassador in there and a gonoral in there, and wo had a high official in the Nassar government in there to force the graduation of this student.
Wo said "no, this student hasn't made it." I think this is part of what tho institution at least provos for the time tho students are there.
The second thing is that this is closely tied into the democratic emphasis of on tho dignity of the individual. I think the students—the ogyptians are tremendous individualists. They've carried the individualism into their personal relationships in the way in which they looked at live, but at the university, I strongly fool tliat they are given ways at looking, opportunities to relate to their groups and losing their fear of groups, to some extent. This, of course, is tho greatest weakness in a developing country: how do you operate colledtivoly—how do you work together, how do you combine your resources in order to follow an objective? If you want a test of this, watch five Egyptians play basket-ball. They're all shooting at once... I feel the university is very significant in this area of how the individual relates to groups.
The third thing is it's abridge. It's a continual bridge between the oriental and western. That's a tremendous accomplishment. Now politically, for the United States, that's the best thing tho United States has going for them in Egypt right now, and it has been I think during the life of tho university. All you have to do is ask the question whether Moscow wouldlike a Russian university in Cairo, and they certainly would... Tall: of
that lias cone up at different tines, and I think it's to the credit of the leaders who have worked with the American University right back tiirough from beginning, that the institution is still there. I don't know a more turbulent political situation unless you exclude Viet Nam than the addle fast lias been during this time.
Dr. .durphy: You also suggested earlier that you as an individual and perhaps
others learned something somewhat special about education in Egypt.
Dr. Shane: hell, I found in the teaching and working with the administration,
the years that I was there I found it a testing of basic assumptions not only about learning but about my own culture and I guess about myself. I strongly feel it gives us a vantage point from which we can look at some of the assumptions about our own culture and if we live our personal and profes­sional lives within our own culture, we never bring out the assumptions and look at them. I feel that this occurred in Egypt... I might mention just one of these assumptions: I found American students to be common sense
oriented they work at matter and common sense in terms of sense perception— wliat they can check out quantitatively, they tend to believe—of course, they have very strong attitudes in non-material areas, but they don't articulate these. They tend to be suspicious of them in learning. With the Egyptian students, I find that they are more at hone in the non-material areas and very suspicious of the common sense areas. So that time, which is a quantitative device in western civilization, and Americans operate by the cloca very naturally, and one of the greatest jobs we had with Egyptians was yetting them to class on time and getting then to class on time and getting reports in on time, and this cane to a head when I taught the footnote.You can say this is a silly assignment to touch tho footnote to -gyptians, but it tool: no about the better part of the senester to yet across to them the idea that it really doesn't matter whether the author of the footnote, whether you end his name in a period or a comma. That's not important. That's not important. The important thing is that we agree as to what a footnote should be and then we follow the form that wo agree upon. I would tale a class of twenty-five students and say, "All right, we're going to put the author's name down and we are going to end it with a period, and we are going to put the title end we are going to underline it. We're going to put the place that it's published and we're going to put the date. We're going to separate then by a comma and put a period, etc." Then I'd give them a list of those factors and say "oh, write a footnote." I'd get twenty- five different versions of the footnote. I'd say "fine your version is as good as anybody else, but the point is wo agreed we'd do it this way.
How you do it that way and just sit there until you do it." They could not relate to the visual, to the pr<ctical world, in a comiaonsense orienta­tion.
I felt that what wo should do with the American University in Cairo was to give them this co monsense orientation so tiiat they could handle it and know how to live with it without destroying their values in the non­material areas. In other 'words, work up a balance. So with American students I've tended to press toward the non-material and got thorn to consider abstract concepts. With the Egyptian, work toward the common- sense without destroying the other. What too often happened when you took a kiddle Easterner and put him through an American education, he could co-.e out such an iron-bound pragmatist, impericist really, that he'd never see anything beyond that.
He'd utterly have destroyed his non-materialconcepts, and what I folt the American University should do would be to bring a balance between those two. 3o I learned a lot about what I'd like to see happen to American students by really working out in my own mind what I'd like to see happen to Egyptian students. I can document this with American authors. Egyptians were unliappy with an author like Ernest Hemin­gway, Benjamin Franklin... Especially Franklin—they didn't understand, who is the apostle of common sense. But they would read Edgar Allan Poe, his horror tales, and it was natural.... They'd come up with ideas about Foe that probably the scholars had never thought of. And Faulkner—just loved Faulkner.
Dr. ijurphy: Well, are there other areas that we haven't touched that you
think are important to know about?
Dr. Sliane: No, I think your questions have been good. If you want some
quantitative parameters, I'll give you a copy of this report to the Board of Trustees which I guess will outline some of the developments during the years I was there.
Dr. Ilurphy: Well, thank you very much. I think this will be helpful.

AIC HISTORY ON TAPE
DRC MARION SHANE
Morphy: I'm talking with President Marion L. Shane,
of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania in his office,. It's February 10, 1973, and talking with Dr. Shane is Lawrence R, Murphy.
Dr. Shane: In 1960-61 I was professor of English
at South Dakots State College in Brookings, South Dakota, I had a aabatical coming for that year.
A colleague of mine in South Dakota State was in Cairo for the 59-60 academic year. He used to play poker with some a group of Americans in Cairo, One of them he played with, was Tom Robert who was in the English Department at that time, It turned out that Tom was going to take a leave of absence or was going to another position in I960, so this friend of ours whose name was Dr, Vern "alan, u sociologist, sent a letter of us in South Dakota. And I remember it came in the morning mail whent I carce Route for lunch. 'Yhile we were sitting for lunch my wife Dorethy and I said,
"Well if Tom Robert, in American literature is going to be gone for a year, why not send a cable and nee whether there might not he an opportunity to go as his replace­ment during my sabbatical." So between 10 minutes to 12 and 1 O'clock in the afternoon, we decided to send a cable and it was sent off and almost forgotten about As a result to that cable, we did hear from the New York Office, Br. Raymond McLain, the President at that time got in touch with us and things worked out. -There before we had been planning to go to Europe for the summer, we finally firmed up arrangements with Dr. McLain. Instead of going to Europe for the Summer we went to Europe in the Summer and then came to Egypt to A.H.C for the 1960—61 Academic Year.2
Dr, Murphy: How would you evaluate the curriculum or
programs before you started making changes or at the time that the self study was carried out?
Dr. Shane: Well, I guess my own dducational philosophy
tended to move toward establishing a relationship between what students learned in college or university work and what they need after graduation. I proceeded from this basic assumption, then to work with departmental chairman and to work with programs I guess raising this question over and over again, I found however in my work as Dean in 1962, that the immediate need was more in the area of clarifying decision making, and establishing regular procedure through which the operations of the University would be regularized. This was necessary in order to set up the kind of communication that the University badly needed at that time. And so I would say, initially my work was more internal and operational. In other words setting up regular meetings, getting dialogue going at various levels and getting some mutual confidence established in working with some of the schims that were very real within the University. Of course, I think our part of the mileau in which the University operate in this is a perrenial problem in all campuses. But I think it was markely so in Cairo at that time.
Dr. Murphy: Can you give some example of more specific
kinds of things that you did that might reflect the nature of the problems,AID. Well, in the last two years I had served as Chairman of a curriculum evaluation committee at South Dakota State where we had drawn up blueprints for the state college attempting to project program developments, and get a picture of where that institu­tion would be in ten years so that as committee meeting began to fee held in Cairo, I began to feed viewpoints and reactions to that ... I was in the English Department a nd Dr. Shoukry was the Chairman of the English DepartmA ment during that year, and she was extremely helping me in the committee assignments I worked on, primarily in the area of planning withintthe University. As a result of the experiences that year, Dr. McLaint talked to me about the possibility of my returning in a year or two in the capacity as dean of the university and so when I left after my nine months at AUC, it was an open question with either one of us as to whether this might turn out actually to occur. As it happened why it did. We had an especially cold winter in South Dakota in 61-62, so I was prompted to wite Dm Mclain that it was very cold, ani I wonder how things were in Cairo. So That’s how it workd out.
Dr. Murphy: Who was the dean during the period that yeu
were there?
Dr. Shane: Dr, Abdul Kader Nomani. Im not sure about
Abid's middle same (he was called Abid) but Dr. Narnani was dean of the faculties during that year and when I returned in 1962, then Dr, Namani went into teaching mathematics and was a great source of help. In fact, was very cooperative in helping me break into the office of dean.£ 3l o
- 4 -
Dr. Sha.no: Well, ono of tho very roal problems in 1962 was tho relationship
between tho Social Research Center and tho Center for Arabic Studies. This was a difficulty during tho time that I was dean because the directors of tho centers reported to the President and tho dean of the faculties reported to the president; yet faculty served as teaching faculty in tho departments.
For example, members of faculty would be in the Department of Arabic Studies but they would also be in tho Center for arabic studies. They would be in tho Department of Sociology-Anthropology, and they would also be in tho Social Research Center. So there was a question of divided loyalty and divided commitments there and a question as to where priorities would exist. This was, perhaps, one of tho most difficult areas of priorities during all tho time that I was dean. I think my own reaction to this, and of course you could talk to others who were involved in it, but I felt that probably by tho third or fourth year that I was there that these difficulties had been pretty well ironed out. In other words we did a lot to try to establish communication, had regular meetings, and these kinds of things. So these are all procedural matters.
Now in terms of curriculum development, we made no major gains until about tho third year. Then in the third year, wo began to implement some changes which would tie more closely tho kinds of learning that tho students would undertake in tho university with their career needs outside. One of tho major thrusts was building up the ELI, the English Language Institute.
I forget the exact year, but t he start of this, and I think it was initiated First by Dr. Bartlett as president, was to work out a close working relationship with Columbia University in which we would welcome graduate assistants, graduate students working for their masters and doctorates to spend an internship at AUG working in the ELI. It was in that year also we had a
grant, i think from the Ford Foundation, to put in a language laboratorywliich is in existence there. So putting more emphasis and more expertise into tuning up the students in terms of their English language abilities was one of the major thrusts.
Dr. Murphy: Did you find while you were teaching English that this was
a problem area?
Dr. Sliane: Yes, and we also found in the records of our students, I
suppose a study could be made of this, that many students were weak in their freshman year. In fact, this vras a problem that I'm very pleased to see lias resulted in what is called the Freshman Year at AUC that students would become much stronger in their sophmore year. But they 3till had the low grades to contend and low grade point average throughout their undergraduate careers. Wo found another phenomenon that I don't know how this pattern would apply at the present time. We found our students initially hesitant to talk in class. They tended to want to be recepticles I guess of knowledge, rather than stating your own ideas. They cane to their courses readier to study their instructors than the subject matter at hand. We would get them worked out of this by the sophmore year and then it was difficult to keep them quiet. When they found they could talk, or even late in their freshman year, they would talk all the time, really without much thought as the what they wore saying and then maybe toward the end of the sophmore year and the beginning of the junior year, they would begin then to think more responsibly about what it vras they were saying.
Dr. Murphy: You said that the curriculum was aimed at providing students
vrith things they would need after graduation. How in the Egyptian mileau did you determine what student needs wore going to be?
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o ? c 3Os
Dr. Shano: Well, I think that one of tho major thrusts that Dr. Bartlett
brought to the university when ho cane as president was to study tho
societal needs and then shape the curriculum to this. Tiro outstanding examples come to mind during the time that I uas dean. Of course English language is an obvious one, but the development of tho solid state scionco prograii in the Department of Science and Chemistry (I forget tho name
prior to solid state, but it uas changed to solid state and then tho solid
state program uas developed). Based upon glass, and glass uas chosen as tho solid state because the rau materials silicone and sand are available in Egypt, and it uas seen as an area for research and development that uould relate very closely to the.Egyptian economy. The second area was the deve­lopment of an administration program in the Deparment of Economics-Political Science. This uas both business and political administration; in other words, business and public administration. The program uas designed to offer the kinds of courses that were badly needed by Egyptian middle management, both from business and from government, and I think that the success of the program can be seen in the largo number of Egyptians uho are brought into it. Nou one of the challenges there was,of course, the matter of English langiago competency of couse, because ue uould have graduates of the national univer­sities applying for this program. This uas one of the obstacles that load to be worked out, and it was an added pressure for the ELI to deal with these graduate students. But this uas taken on and the program started, I think roughly, about in 1965. I've had conversations with it's architect,
Dr. Lauren Tesdale subsequent to that time and apparently it wont very well.
Dr. Murphy: It's very successful nou.
Dr. Sliane: Yes, this is my understanding. But those are two examples. I3&3
sight point out another one: tho arabic language requirement was when I vent there, two years of classical arabic which was one of the unhappiost requirements within the institution* This was amended in 1963 or 1964 to a year of coloquial arabic or classical depending up on tho student. In other words, this was really geared more to area of use so that non-thanaweya- amma students could take colloquial arabic which, of course, was of groat use to them.
Dr. Murphy: Did you have way of comrauicating or exchanging curriculum
ideas with tho national universities, or hov did you relate your curriculym planning to what they were doing?
i
Dr. Shane: Well, let me report what I sav take place, and then probably in
dialogue with others you could may bo go into how these kinds of things were engineered. In the early 1960's the university was more self-contained than it was in the mid-1960's. By self contained, I meant, I would say this in throe ways. First tho intercourse between the AUC and tho American Embassy was mimimal, and it was discouraged. Relationships between AUC and the national universities was also mimimal, and tho relationships between AUC and the governmental agencies was minimal. Our contacts wore usually contacts where they were concerned about taxes or concerned about books we had in the library: this kind of contact. Toward the middle of the 1960's this was thrown open and the university adopted a more open stance to its en­vironmental society. By open stance, courtesy visits were paid to tho Rectors to Cairo University, Ein Shams and A1 Azhar. Tliis was considered part of tho procedure. We began to open dialogues with faculty. AUC has
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always used, at least in my experience with the institution, had used adjunct a ^ointments. Part-time faculty members would come from the national univer­sities, but this was on a bind of a yon so- cl level, and it uas an attractive offer for thou because the salaries at AUG wore usually hi her than those at the national universities., but by the mid-19&Cfsf there uas an encourage out for developing relationships between AUG and povornnontal agencies, and the Amo- rican embassy, and the national universities. You eiay liavo rim into this in your other dialogues, but this really portrayed a significant development in
the life of the university, and it correlated very closely with tb
e uOo-xe
111
the university to shape its proprams in directions that would feed needs in the contextuol society. I found these developments very compatible in :ay own educational philosophy. I should point out tliat the Social desearch Center, even from earlier years, had been engaged in projects: the bubian project, the relocation, the resettle:lent study for villages tliat wore poinp to be flooded cut by the Aswan Dan: were pr opr a is of this hind but they were in the research area of the institution. The rove durinp the 60*s was to shape nearly all of the programs in the direction of needs of the contextual society. In my own opinion, looking how in hindsipht at those developments, I believe it is one or the reasons that the :diversity lias been allowed to continue under the bpyptian . ••overnment. It *3 providing expertise and competencies that are badly needed by this society.
Dr. burphy: In addition the mow mi oprams, do you think there uas a pualitativo
chanpo in the educational urogram?
Dr. oiiano: Jell, one thrust tliat wo attempted to oncourape out of the dean1 s
office and tlirouph the do iartmental chairman was to mlaeo increased emphasisJ-o T5
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up on teaching, and working with tho students and moving out of the more or loss lecture syndrome. How much of this took hold is a little difficult to say. In general, I would say the results were favorable and whore this occur­red, I tend to think there was a qualitative difference that tho students very much felt.
Dr. Murphy: Are you suggesting that there were problems in implementing this,
then?
Dr. Shane: Well, I think it called for now approaches, and new attitudes, and
now techniques tliat are not always too easy to implement in an educational
environment. I would say wo made some moves in that direction; not as many as wo would have liked to. But I do feel that there was a heightened sensitivity
to the needs of the students as a result of these kinds of emphases and dialo­gues
related to them.
Dr. Murphy: Do you think tliat the problems you faced in this area are es­sentially
the ones you would face in any American school or were there special difficulties caused by being in Egypt?
Dr. Shane: I think tliat ... the- same kinds of problems are faced in an
American institution but the severity of the problem was perhaps greater in AUG because the students had come through the examination system, the GCE, or the thanawoya-amma, and they were geared toward examinations and being judged by their system. They were very what I would call grade conscious. Therefore, grades were always central in their own minds, in the minds of tho students, and so there would be more difficulty in making this approach with Egyptian students than perhaps with students from other cultures or from cultures whore there hadn't been such an emphasis on examinations, you see in tho, pre-college years, pre-university years.-10-
DTo Murphy: Do you think the quality of students increases or decreases or remains about the same or did you see any noticable changes in the kinds of students who entered and who stayed long enough to graduate?
Dr« Shane: During the time that I was there, I think there
was a definite shift lavry, in the economic levels of the students, partly because of the process of sequestration1# and some of the students between I960 and 1966 went through some very traumatic experences because their family fortunes were confiscated by the government,, They jvould come to school on a Monday and have trepidations things happen btit theyTd come by Wednesday and find everything that the family had, would be wiped out. The family then would be subsisting for a while just on the amount of money the sequestration officials would dole out them. So I would say, in general that the economic- social level of our students tended to drop during this year, these years, which then placed more dependence up on scholarship funds and means of helping them get through the university,. This was a general characteristic throughout the Egyptian society during the 60*s and probably has continued to this time.
Dr. Murphy: How about it terms of motivations?
Dr. Shane: Well, I would say that this is a rather nebulous factor of nail down in a few words. My impression at this time, looking back on it, is that we had I was there from 60-66. Toward the end of that time students tended to look at their education in more realistic terms. I ce.n give one example without naming of the student and it isn£t necessary to name the student. We had a very capable young lady student, from an upper middle chss family or an upper blass family,231
perhaps at one time, who never got above Cfs in the American University. When time came for her graduation she wanted to get into graduate school in the United States, and had difficulty. We had a committee of faculty writing recommendations at this time, and she had trouble with the committee. In fact had difficulty because of her grade point average of getting the support of this faculty committee. However, with the skills that she had, she was able to get into a very good graduate school in the United States. Within three years she was getting her doctoral degree in the United States with very good grades. The point is that while she was at AUG she just studied enough to get by, and then when her roles changed and she got into a doctoral program in the states, then she really put on the coals and did the job, and she could have done this back in AUC. Now the motivation change for this individual as her social eaonomic factors changed, and I think this was a factor working through the university. In other words 'where in the early 60 ’ s where many going to a University like AUG was just sort of the thing to do, by the mid 60’s it wq,s a difference between making a living and not making a living or finding the kind of life that one wanted or not finding the kind of life that one wanted. And so these external factors affected the way the students tended to look at the University. I don’t know whether that factor is still working now or not, but I think it was working during those years.
Dr. Murphy: You mentioned communication within the university
Could you described the committee system, and the way it functioned or how it developed during the period.
Dr. Shane: Only because the years have dimmed some of my
memories, although it isn’t too long ago. I remember that we used to meet regularly with the departmental chairman.
This was working meeting. We also had, I think, a curriculum committee and may be the departmental chairman’s committee
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operated as a curriculum committee but these were long working sessions where much really of the nitty gritty of thrashing out program proposals, and looking at developments and budgets were carried out. Then we had the appointment, Pro­motion and Tenure Committee, which was about as thorough a review of the application of the guidelines of appointment, promotion and tenure as Ifve aver worked with feecause all appointments, promotions and tenure went through the APT committee which was composed of the directors of the centers and the divisional (heads) equitably. I think that was a good result of that procedure. ItTs the only institution that 1ve been in where this has gone through a committee of that kind and it has some merits. It has some demerits in that it is a tremendous amount of work. 6ne thing that we attempted to do at that time was that whem a case came to the APT committee they had pretty full information about it, and they had comparative salary figures and they had the whole thing pretty w^ll laid out, so I would see there were pretty good proffe- ssional judgments made in the matter of placement, the matter promotion, and the matter tenure.
Dr. Murphy: This leads into another major area of concern of yours and that would be staffing and personnel. Could you talk about that in a general sort of way?
Dr. Shane: Yes, I was really asked to come out as the Dean
of the faculties to strengthen the quality of the academic Xerograms and to develop graduate programs. Those were the two major assignments that I had so in the staffing picture we tended I went whie out which was in.'. 1962, the staffing was truncated and disjunctive in a sense in that Dr. McLain, about February or March of that year, had a coronary and was hospitalized. I was deeply involved in work that I was doing at South Dakota State, but what I did was to take some time off on week ends and during vacation to get into New York to see him in the hospital and talk with him by telephone, and pull the staffing picture together and really carry on
^ cr~ o
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the staffing that he had intended to do. Beginning in 163 wo then laid out the staffing was tied into progran relationships which were developed in the United States. In other words,we not only would talk staff with other various institutions but we would talk ideas related to graduate program development, and we kept asking "How can we develop programs that will produce students who can function efficiently in the kind of society they'll be going into?" * So there was a duel purpose in the trips I took to the states.
Dr. Murphy: Gan you give a specific example, maybe, of the way in which
these inter-institutional relationships developed?
Dr. Shane: Well, Dr. Bartlett in 1963, proposed the Visiting Professor arrangement whereby institutions like Indians or Iowa, or any others that might be interested would take one of their outstanding men, or individuals in a given field and send them over to AUC for two years. Then they would take a department, and the one that comes to mind is the Department of English at the University of Iowa, which had a very good reputation at the time, and the;, would rotate their senior faculty members to Cairo.
We would set up an apartment, and we would make arrangements there to bring them in and rotate them. I remember Dr. Alexander Kern was one of the first to come over on that basis. Alexander Kern was so successful in the English Department and such a strong member within the university that second year ho was there, he was elected chairman of the faculty.
And so the kind of contribution that he made was over and beyond the kind of contribution we would got with a normal faculty appointment. Not onlythat, his wife, Joan Korn, was an associate professor, of English, was an excellent teacher and very well known in her own field. So wo had almost double reward. But wo looked at these possibilities as we talked.... in other works, ongoing relationships. Instead of a staffing pattern where we would go to see isolated applicants in various parts of the country. V/e talked, for example, about administration programs with Brigham Young, with Stanford, with schools where this kind of program had already established a reputation. And then We'd bring the ideas back and channel them into our program development in the states. Then Dr. Barlett developed a relationship with Indiana University which is still going on. This was done through Herman Wells who was then chancellor....
Dr. Murphy: So these were generally then quite sucessful.
Dr. Shane: And then wo tended, as we staffed in this pattern, and we had
key people and some of the strongest universities in the states advising us, we were then able to look at a roster of applicants which was far dif­ferent from the roster where wo simply put advertisements out or list the positions out to placement bureaus, etc. Of course, wo did that also. But I would say that I was very pleased with the quality of faculty appointments. We tended to got people with more and more experience both in teaching and in research coming out.
Dr. Murphy: Was recruiting done in any different way than it would be for
an American university, a stateside school?cSS/
Dr. Shano: I think so bocauso, for example, tho role of tho wife was very important. We would always try to interview tho wife as well as the faculty member, because if that wife came over there and didn't like Cairo, it didn't matter how good tho faculty member was he had a problem and,tho univer­sity had a problem. I don't know how successful we were in doing this kind of screening. I don't third: that are any sure guidelines for it, but I suppose after going through soferal dozen interviews and then seeing many of these people come out and hue, one gets a sense a feel about now people raight react to a foreign situation. One experience I might mention, and this I had only second hand: one family came to AUC through the Far East
and after they had seen Tokyo, and Hong Kong and Singapore and ... Now Delhi, Cairo looked like a modern city to them. They were not dismayed by anything they mot in Egypt during the time that they were thoro. When our faculty had come through Paris and Rome or London and Paris to Cairo, they tended to feel a little dismayed. In other words, there was an orientation that took place when they came tl^o other way around. I don't know how signi­ficant this would be, but it was true in that one case.
Dr. Murphy: Did you develop techniques for trying to explain to applicants
what Egypt was like? Did you ever show films, for example?
Dr. Shano: We didn't show films or slides. In my own interviewing I would try to talk about negative aspects of living in Egypt. In addition wo did a lot of work on the documents that were sent out. I think Dr. McLain had done a tremendously capable job of working up tho documents that were given to me in 1960. We continued to adapt those documents to the conditions as they were changing in Egypt, so that any body who road them thoroughly I think, had a pretty good picture of what to expect. Of course, our inter­views tended to supplement those with details. One thing we never tried towo novor triod to do was pressure somebody into coming out, because that,
I think would have been self-defeating. At least the technique that I used. If there was a meeting of minds and the people wore interested, wo tended to lay everything on the lino for them. We talked about customs problems.
We talked about censorship problems. We talked about dirt and wo talked about flies on food, and you know these kinds of things. I think as result the screening was fairly good... because the majority of the people who came out tended to stay for some time. In fact, some of them, I guess, are still there.
Dr. Murphy: Do you think AUC was competitive in terms of precruiting
facility?
Dr. Shane: Larry, never underestimate the Pyramids and the Sphinx. They
balanced everything out. In terms of finances, no. We simply wore not competitive during the time that I was recruiting. For one thing, people did not understand what it cost to love in Egypt. We wore very explicit. You could not, at that time, live anymore cheaply in Egypt than you could in the United States. I think in about 1960, there was a feeling you could, but inflation started to catch up by then and by the time I was recruiting in 1962, we laid that right on the line. Don't expect to save any money living in Egyptj it will cost you just as much to live there as it will in the states.
Dr. Murphy: What then was the motivation for faculty that took jobs,
coming to Egypt?Dr. Shane: Well, I think so. Coming to Egypt was one of the factors,
but I think also there was also an interest in and an excitement about the kind of institution AUC was. I think they liked the Ideas. Wherever we could find compatibility between what we were trying to do and what the faculty member wanted to try to do, this was the bonding element.
Wo had a lot who applied who wanted to see the lyramids, but that in it­self was not the basis on which the appointments were made.
Dr. Murphy: Was recruiting a major abstacle for you or did this combine
together to make it reasonably easy to fill the slots with capable people?
Dr. Shane: I would say that always had more applicants than positions,
and wo always had good selectivity in applicants. One or two exceptions: sociology was tight for a time; it was everywhere. However, positions that wore filled were filled with good people... Economics was tight too awhile, but again there wo were fortunate.
Dr. Murphy: To what extent did the Now York office work with your acti­vities?
Hoxj did they fit into the picture?
Dr. Shane: At that time, wo used them quite a bit in scheduling and in
setting up interviews. They played a fairly important role, because they were the go-between, communications in the states and AUG. Wo always had difficulty of mail problems. You never could be certain that a letter would get through. Sometimes wore bettor than others. Often wo were surprised. We could count on about six to seven day delivery at that time. The Now York office was handling all the finances then, and it was a fairly busy operation. It changed locale while I was out there. It moved from the Elat Iron Building to the United Nations. I think the character of theNot./ York office probably altered during those years to sono extend in that it tended to be more streamlined. Toward the end of my time with the univer­sity. And I would say in my last two staffing trips, I probably, was in the New York office only half a day, during the time I was over, and the rest of the time I would be on the road.
Dr. Murphy: Gan you describe a recruiting trip?
Dr. Sliano: Work on a recruiting trip would begin three to four months
before the trip would take place, because wo would really start the year before in the late spring of the year before laying out the rough descrip­tions and then in the fall wo would firm them up. Then we would send out a list of the positions that would be needed by the next fall. This was sent out to placement bureaus at the top 50 universities in the United States. Then correspondence would begin to cone in mid November, late November or December. Then the trip would take place in mid-January say or early February, but usually in January. This would be based or on cor­respondence that would come inj it would be based on program inquiries and program interests. I would then come into the states, int New York usual­ly, and then move lut from there and typical one I swing out Indiana, Iowa, USC, Stanford, University of Washington, etc. At that time, I didn't do much in Minnesota. I'd go to Michigan State, I'd go to Cornell. I didn't get into the New England states much in the ones I happened to take. That would be a typical trip in the course of that time. I'd got into Chicago for a couple of days and during that time, I'd see maybe 30 individuals.
And probably two-thirds of them to would be applicants and the rest I'd betalking to then in toms of program developments. I’d say that's about the patterns.
Dr. Murphy: Did you got involved in any student recruitment?
Dr. Shane: No, I didn't work vrith the student recruitment. This was done
primarily by the admissions office at AUC. I was working primarily with faculty.
Dr. Murphy: We might talk about some of the people that you worked with
and what kinds of individuals they wore or what contributions they made.
I suppose Dr. McLain is a good starting point.
Dr. Shane: Dr. Me Iain was the kind of president, I think, who had clearly
defined pliilosophy of education in his own mind. He had come out of the ministry, and had been a very successful president of Transylvania before he went to AUC. He saw the development of the university carried out I think largely through the leadership of the president... And of course its significant that when he first when out there ... perhaps in 1955-56 because at the end of his first academic year, the university had to be evacuated...
A bus was called and the faculty was put on the bus. He was the last one on, and just before the bus left, ho stopped off and was going to stay with the university. He was that kind of man. The precarious nature of that first year's experience and all that was involved in the Suez crisis of 56 I think made him feel the development of the university had to watched over very closely. I'd say he was the kind of administrator that tended to work very directly with people. So tliat when the university was small, as it was in 1956, this created no groat problem because you could handletilings on a more or loss personal basis. The difficulty for him in the early 60*s was that the university was growing in size, and the pressures on the president's office under this kind of an arrangement were tremen­dous. I don't know exactly how ho stood this kind of pressure. The symptom of it would be ho would have to see people about all kinds of things, so the pressure just increased. The type of administration which was ideal for the university in the mid 50's placed increased pressure on the president in the early 60's. In other words, Dr. McLain's abilities wore so high, and his personal charm so great, but the demands on him wore correspondingly great, so that he just couldn't keep up with the kinds of personal relationships that had to go on to keep the university going. So there was a kind of pressure on the seams under this kind of an arrangement. I will say this about him: he was a person of absolute integrity, but he
was pushed and pushed and pushed.
I feel that strides made by the university at this time were tremen­dous. There's just no doubt about it. He moved them in terms of its relationship with sources of influence within the United States and in terms of stature within the Arab world to new levels. This prepared tho base and prepared the framework for someone like Dr. Tom Bartlett. What I'm giving you now is a personal interpretation of the way the adiainistra- tion and thrusts of the university that were developed during the times that I was associated with.
Dr. Bartlett came there from tho United Nations where ho had spent seven or eight years working with Cabot Lodge and with Adlai Stevenson, both, where there was a tremendous amount of give and take and a great deal of flexibility of position and ability to work with a variety of situa­tions and a delegation of responsibility. Under Dr. Bartlett AUC becamein a sense a little bit... a model of the United Nations. We began to initiate dialogue with the world outside the university and the contextual society and to keep this dialogue going and not worry about disagreements as we were doing. This was Dr. Bartlett’s stylo and he did the sane thing within the university. As a result, there was a greater delegation of responsibility.....
Dr. Murphy: There's an obvious generational change between the two men.
Did that lead to some differences?
Dr. Shane: Yos, it did. No differences between Dr. Bartlett and Dr.
McLain because when Dr. Bartlett came in Raymond McLain want to the Now York office as chancellor, really put his efforts into that pound endowment which was being worked through congress. Of course ho did that job with individuals like Jim Barco and others helping him in a way that probably on one else could have done. This was an amazing accomplishment.... It was arranged this way that Tom Bartlett would work within the university, develop the university in his own stylo and approach. I was not privy to any sources of conflict between the two individuals, whether they occurred,
I wouldn't know.
Dr. IiUrphy: How about in their style of operation?
Dr. Shane: In their style of operation, I would say there is a definite
difference of philosophy: the one that came out of the UN and the one that grew out of the tradition of what I would say that I would call a personal leader. Of the personal leader type, Dr. McLain was one of the most capableand efficient individuals I've over worked with. I have seen this pattern in other institutions of higher education where size and complexity of problems... breaks down the personal system of leadership. I've felt this put great pressure on Dr. McLain.
Dr. Murphy: You noted before that you had worked with Dr. MeLane shortly
after he'd had his coronary. Can you describe that series of events in the way it may have affected him or his administration?
Dr. Shane: After his coronary, he left at the end of that academic year—
I don't remember the timing of it. Ho had to take it easy after that....
I don't think he changed his approach nor would I have expected him to.
Ho was still...*
Dr. Murphy: He drove himself hard after the coronary?
Dr. Shane: Yes he did. I won't say that he was a bad boy, but ho certainly
kept hkept his eye on his job and pursued it with a great deal of vigor.
But I think also, he was very sensible about his regime. He watchod this as carefully as ho could.Dr. Shano: Tliis was part of his whole plans of giving the university
recognition, I think, at points of influence and at points of fund giving. This was very succesfully done by him. As a matter of fact, ... the pound endowment fund which came into oxistance, (I guess it is really just begin­ning to function now in 1973). The thinking about that was started as a result of the self-study which came out must have come out in 61-62 which was a voluminous job. That placed the American University — I think had a great deal of influence with many individuals in the State Department.
There may bo other points of view about this. In other words, that was a tremendous document and it took a lot of work and a lot of things wore pulled together into it. This was Dr. McLain's brain child. A lot that was done duuring his administration I would say that he was really stemmed out of that very capable in this area.
Now Dr. Bartlett brought a different kind of strength to the university which was one of working with the relationships ... with the environmental society, around the university the opening of dialogue with external individuals and agencies and points of influence in Egyptian society, and expanding the dialogue internally.
Dr. Murphy: Were you involved with construction, particularly the
science building which was going on during most of that time?
Dr. Shano: I was there in 1960 when the cornerstone was laid and it was
finished ... three months after I left in June of 1966 for the opening of the solid state conference that Dr. Adly Bishy held. It took them six years to build that. So all the time I was with AUC. That building was going on in the corner of the campus. That's the major problem. That's the major construction that occurred.Dr. Murphy: Was there pressure from the academic viewpoint for increased
facilities? How did that relate to your academic plan?
Dr. Shane: Pressure from my office for increased classroom space, I don’t remember the details. We expanded the undergraduate student body from roughly 500 to 4B0 to 900. We doubled it during the time I was there, and wo had about 14 general classrooms. The purchase of the Greek school which was Dr. Tom Bartlett taking a tremendous chance in the early 60’s.
That was a very courageous step on his part to pull in the complex of the Greek school. It relieved a tremendous amount of pressure for us, because as we increased students, wo had to increase faculty. We were hurting for office space and we were hurting for classroom space. We were expanding library holdings for the new undergraduate programs, so we load a whole concatenation of pressures related to facilities as this was accuring. We saw the Solid State Science with that now Science building as helping Tremendously if that would ever get finished.
Dr. Murphy: Before we got away from this, are there other individuals that
you think ought to have special mention either in administration or faculty of one sort of another.
Dr. Murphy: If wo were to start a list of individuals that should have
special mention, it would be far too long. I was sorry that one of the persons you couldn’t talk to was Dr. Iauron Tesdale because of his work in building the administration program and the department of economics— political science.... He was really the mentor for that; the one who carried it through to successful completion. And I would say that this was a verynotworthy accomplishment. Ono anocdoto I flight pass on to you regarding this particular point about how an institution grows and how it gets ideas. In 1963 I think, the spring of '63, wo had four faculty members sit down in my office who played the game of "What If". We said "Let's forgot about budget", because we wore struggling with budget at the time, wo said "let's not think about budget let's think about what we would like to see happen at the institution. Let's not talk about hoi; we work to get it happen, or what logistics would have to be carried out. What are some of the things we'd like to see happen?" Wo sat there for about an hour and a half and brainstormed. We came up with a list of about six things. Of the six things we had on the list, five of then wore operational within two years. That's something I've always romeborod ... and something I learned out of ay Cairo experience. Administration when I went out there was such a tacky job and I use the word tacky in the sense that we had brush fires all the time, job. You'd spend all your time and effort putting out brush fires. You'd work all day putting out brush fires and you'd leave a stack of undone things on your desk and you'd come in the next morning and start in on them.
So all one's time was spent at reacting to brush fires. And one of my thrusts was to procedurizo things, to take care of four fifths of the brush fires at least so then we could look at some basic directions. I would say the first two years there was spent primarily in this kind of thing. This session whore we did the brainstorming was one of the most fruitful meetings that I had during the first two years.
Dr. Murphy: Can you talk in a little more detail about the specific units and
how they developed. For example, you mentioned the ELI before—how much of that sort of detail you remember after all these years?Dr. Shano: I think that tho difficulty with the ELI ua3 first teaching English as a second language, and we had quite a bit of dialogue about whether it's bo English as a foreign language or English as a second language; tho Columbia approach tended to emphasize English as a second language. First it is a difficult job, and I think people outside the field tend to over-simplify it and wonder why if you've got all that time and all that equipment, this cannot bo done efficiently. Well, I think anyone who has worked closely with ELI can may be not be so critical about what occurs, because it's a very difficult process: learning a second language. I think, especially for students who are based in Arabic. When our students had both Arabic and French as many of our middle class students had, it was a simpler job but still it was.
Secondly, just having a few teachers and not having a variety of theoretical input into it was also difficult. I thinl: there we were helped by getting leadership from Columbia in the program. Without mentioning individuals, I think this is exactly what occurred. Wo had some very hard working directors in ELI—three or four during the time that I was there. The Columbia program gave us some sense of direction.
Dr. Ilurphy: Did the graduated program of the Masters degree in TEFL develop
out of this need then?
Dr. Shane: Well Columbia had a TEFL (I don't know whether they call it TEFL)
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but they had a masters program, and they were building it up about the time we wanted to work this arrangement out with them, and they saw it as a natural for them. We had very competent young people come out as (I forget what vie called them) instructors or graduate assistants, but they came out and actual­ly taught in the ELI. And of course they wore channelling in tho latest theoriesthat the Aliens wore teaching at Columbia.
Dr. Murphy: How about in the field of Arabic studies?
Dr. Shane: In the field of Arabic Studies, the change or the curriculum
in language teaching moved it toward the colloquial, and we had some excellent young people who if ere teaching colloquial Arabic, not only to our students but teaching it to groups from outside the university. A lot of embassy people, for example, began to cone to these. This was a very successful program. Then in Arabic Studies itself, of course, the research was carried out of the directors office. And we began to develop more liasons with the Egyptian universities the mid 60s in this areas. Although there were political overtones to that as I think you could well understand.
Dr. Murphy: Did the acquisition of the Creswell collection lead to some
changes in that program? That had been acquired by the time you came.
Dr. Shane: That was acquired, but in that. I dont know whether Dr. Creswell is still alive now. We had quite a bit of research being carried on in Islamic Art and Architecture as a result of Dr. Creswell1s influence and prestige. However, this was not vitally tied in with the curriculum of the university. This was primarily a research project. This consisted of research projects which were developed out of the Center for Arabic Studies. Again there wore some political overtones to the development of that also.
Dr. Murphy: Another research area is the SRC. How did that develop?would have this kind of information for you. As I indicated one of the initial difficulties that I faced in the deans office was to build a viable department of sociology-anthropology and then get it on a working relationship with the SRC. This was really not effective until Dr. Abdullah Lutfiyyah came in as chairman of the Department of Sociology-Anthropology. The department began to acquire some stature and then departmental members began to tie into research that was carried on by the SRC. own feelings about the research projects are that the SRC. They were very much oriented to needs that the Egyptian got involved in government and Egyptian society faced. But I also can assure you that was that. They had to proceed very cafefully with their research, and make sure that they had clearance not only with the government officials but from the villages they were working with and make sure they had clearance.
Bob Fernea, who was the director of the project for the Nubian research of course had to deal very much with this part of it and of course Dr. Laila Hamamsy tried to keep the lines of communication open with government officials with whom they had to work. I-£y own feeling is that the research there tended to be very much need oriented. Ofcourse the SRC lead some fairly sizeable grants for this reason, some very good Ford Foundation grants and, I think, good working relationship with AID.
Dr. Murphy: You mentioned the solid state physics program before.
Is there anything you'd like to add to that?
Dr. Shane: Well, I would say, there, that Dr. Beshai built an extremely strong
program. One academic development that was in the picture as I went out in 1962 was the development of graduate programs with a six-year continuum in
Dr. Shane: I don't know the early background of that, and Dr. Laila Ilamarasy
mind. In othor words you'd have a laddor that would start at tho freshman
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year and built right up through the masters level. This was tho concept that I moved into as I went out there. The Solid State program is probably tho one that best exemplifies that in that the curriculum change was made in tho second or third year that pretty tied much tied the student into a science locI:-3tep probram through those six years. I myself am not sure ... this was the best way to do it, and I'm not sure what Dr. Beshai's views on this at this time would be. I went through the administrative counsel, and it was adopted by tho university. But whether those scientists now are able to have tho breadth of interest and deal with human relationships as hopefully scien­tists should do is a question that Dr. Boshai would have to maybe comment upon.
Dr. Murphy: There were also some developments in the library during this
period. Can you talk about those? I believe this would coincide with the Hill House.
Dr. Shane: That was done subsequent to my being there although there ms
a remodelling occur. Woe we had a succession of directors also. This is an old tradition in tho library.
Dr. Murphy: Why? Is there a particular personnel problem in getting libra­rians tio go to Egypt? This seems to have started about in 1920 and hasn't stopped yet.
Dr. Shane: I don't know and I never really came to any conclusion in my own
mind about that situation. I would suppose, tliat librarians may bo in tightdemand in the United States and this is a factor. I just don't know. I know that was not a central thrust in the staffing. It was always a kind of a problem that was never solved. I don't know whether this is a structural problem or not. I can't oven remember whether the librarian reported to the dean. I think ho did. If we got a very experienced librarian, wo could got him for only about a year. This was problem, of course.
Dr. Murphy: Was there concern about the size and quality of the library in
light of the upgrading of academic probrams?
Dr. Shane: This was a question, of course, and as we moved into our graduate
programs, we had to push library holdings in those areas. 0 course, getting books into Egypt was a challenge. But I felt that enough resources were put into this, so that we did not have difficulty getting in aproval for our three graduate programs and they were in English, Sociology-Anthropology and Economics- Political Science. Wo were able to get those approved.
Dr. Murphy: There seemed to have been special problems in Political Science
and Economics. Can you talk about that program a little?
Dr. Shane: Well, at different times I think there were. I don't really have any clear picture of what's occurred in recent years. As I think one of the problems was Economics in that it was a difficult subject to teach to Egyptian students. It wa3 a very difficult subject.
Dr. Hurphy: I think Political Science has somewhat the same difficulties,
too, probably.heard Egyptian students talk about examples. Economics textbooks would take examples from. American life and civilization, and Egyptian students would complain about this. The instructors would complain about it that tho Egyptiahs had difficulty seeing what the examples... The examples were more complicated than the concepts they were supposed to explan an American Cul­tural background and, of course, the economics was highly theoretical... I don't have any memory of difficulty in that department, major difficulty.
We may have had in 62 or 63 but Dr. Tesdale came in 63 or 64 and moved toward tho development of the graduate programs I think with a great deal of success.
Dr. Murphy: Was there political sensitivity?
Dr. Shano: Oh, yea. One of the factors we had to deal with hero was visa
approval with foreign faculty. Wo were under, and AUC probably still is, a quota system. I don't think we had any faculty members turned back except one instance. We brought an individual in. I didn't, because it was a Director of Continuing Education but I think ho was brought in by Dr. Hanna Risk, no by the President, A director of continuing education or adult education. His visa was denied. We had no other visas denied for faculty coming in during those years. Now, wo had a couple faculty leave in a hurry but these wore other matters. They didn't deal with political sensitivity.
Dr. Murphy: Is tills a problem that affects the Political Science department especially. Did tho Egyptians seem wary of Americans talking about things political?
Dr. Shano: I didn't got that in my office. It's tho one subject where I
Dr. Shane: Wo liad none of that, and probably because of the sensitivity of
the faculty to those hinds of concerns. Ho this was not a problem.
Dr. Murphy: How about the English program, you must have boon rather close to that....the development of the graduate program at least.
Dr. Shane: ... There wore some concerns about it, in my own mind. I'd be interested in Doris Shukry's comments about it because it tended to lead to a masters degree in English Literature as such, and then the Question of what the market place would bo for individuals who came out of this. You see it was literature oriented. While the need is tremendous in a society for teaching English as a second or foreign language. The need was not so great for the teachers of literature as such. I don't know how that lias turned out in terms of the basic basis that I spoke about and that is relating to career and life needs after granduation.
Dr. Murphy: It's continued alone in that direction until rather recently and
when I loft, the English Department was involved in a curriculum revision more in the direction of comparative literature rather than American literature. They were talking about bringing some French ,,,•
Dr. Shane: This would make a great deal of sense, I think. I myself would
feel this would probably.have more liability than one tied into.Bnglish lit­erature.
Dr. Murphy: The graduate program has been very small in English.Dr. Shano: Well, it was... During tho thrusts that I'm talking about,
tho numbor of English majors tended to docroaso as I remember ...
Dr. Murphy: How numbor conscious wore you?
Dr. Shano: What wo noodod to do was to got some points of comparison.
In order to chock out student response to programs. Also in order to deal with deal with staffing requests, we needed some background in staf­fing. This is why these figures wore worked up during those years. What my office attempted to was build up the records so we could do our plan­ning for tho future on the basis of what had happened in the past. This was one of tho first lessons in administration; to see that this would occur. So an emphasis was put on it.
Dr. Murphy: The university has traditionally emphasized a rather close
faculty-student relations and a rather small classes. Was this done in­tentionally or were you worried by tho smallness of certain programs?
Dr. Shano: Worried only in the sense that; in other words we didn't
really take a quantitative approach to decision making, but worried in tho sense that if classes wore small, maybe students weren't supporting them and ask questions on that basis. But I would say at AUC we didn't ask hard questions about it, because we couldn't make the changes as ra­pidly as perhaps one might at an American university.
Dr. Murphy: Perhaps to conclude, you made some particular comments oarli,
about the particular educational significance of AUG in terms of giving people a broader outlook. Can you talk about that a bit? ...Dr. Sliane: Looking now backwards to my time at AUG and then intorproting
also the kinds of messages I'm getting from the university, (I get bul­letins and fliers and occassionally an alumni communication). I am more enthusiastic than over with what the institution is trying to do, because I see it as a meeting ground between a product of western culture and a society oriented to eastern culture. One of the most affective situations that I went through at AUC, and I went through it many times: alumni would be individuals I hadn't met before, and I didn1t know the circumstances under which they had attended the university, but they'd have a look in their eyes and they would have a feeling about the university that at first I couldn't analyze. But as this experience repeated itself, I began to put an interpre­tation on it. And it would something like this: one of the basic distinctions between the oriental cultural approach to life, especially in Egypt... is that you don't trust the system. You build your life and your assurances and your values on personal relationships. And they would come to the univer­sity with this point of view. What they would find at their four years in a university is that hero is an attempt to set up a system where regulations and a sense or order is adhered to. You can trust the order. This was the look that I would see in the aluiani when they'd come back. This is I think one of the central thrusts of the university in the Arab view. Maybe it creates disjunctions in the students that go through it. But I feel until east and west reach some land of raproachmont on this point, it's going to be very difficult for (end of tape). There'd be a hunger in the eyes and in the statements of these people for this concept of order.
If you talk to an Egyptian about how he lives in Egyptian society, ho builds on these personal relationships. He doesn't trust the law. Ho doesn't trust the government. He doesn't trust the tax system, and the reasonho doesn't is that his whole cultural heritage lias boon run by tho foreigners. Of course his own people are in there now, but that doesn't change tho fooling the residual fooling that's come out of generations of this and ages of this, a millonium of this. Yet at tho American University, students tine and again would see decisions made on tho basis of the system. When students would bring pressure to bear for grades, for graduation and this hind of thing.
Wo load one student I happened to follow through from freshman to senior. Wo had an ambassador in there and a gonoral in there, and wo had a high official in the Nassar government in there to force the graduation of this student.
Wo said "no, this student hasn't made it." I think this is part of what tho institution at least provos for the time tho students are there.
The second thing is that this is closely tied into the democratic emphasis of on tho dignity of the individual. I think the students—the ogyptians are tremendous individualists. They've carried the individualism into their personal relationships in the way in which they looked at live, but at the university, I strongly fool tliat they are given ways at looking, opportunities to relate to their groups and losing their fear of groups, to some extent. This, of course, is tho greatest weakness in a developing country: how do you operate colledtivoly—how do you work together, how do you combine your resources in order to follow an objective? If you want a test of this, watch five Egyptians play basket-ball. They're all shooting at once... I feel the university is very significant in this area of how the individual relates to groups.
The third thing is it's abridge. It's a continual bridge between the oriental and western. That's a tremendous accomplishment. Now politically, for the United States, that's the best thing tho United States has going for them in Egypt right now, and it has been I think during the life of tho university. All you have to do is ask the question whether Moscow wouldlike a Russian university in Cairo, and they certainly would... Tall: of
that lias cone up at different tines, and I think it's to the credit of the leaders who have worked with the American University right back tiirough from beginning, that the institution is still there. I don't know a more turbulent political situation unless you exclude Viet Nam than the addle fast lias been during this time.
Dr. .durphy: You also suggested earlier that you as an individual and perhaps
others learned something somewhat special about education in Egypt.
Dr. Shane: hell, I found in the teaching and working with the administration,
the years that I was there I found it a testing of basic assumptions not only about learning but about my own culture and I guess about myself. I strongly feel it gives us a vantage point from which we can look at some of the assumptions about our own culture and if we live our personal and profes­sional lives within our own culture, we never bring out the assumptions and look at them. I feel that this occurred in Egypt... I might mention just one of these assumptions: I found American students to be common sense
oriented they work at matter and common sense in terms of sense perception— wliat they can check out quantitatively, they tend to believe—of course, they have very strong attitudes in non-material areas, but they don't articulate these. They tend to be suspicious of them in learning. With the Egyptian students, I find that they are more at hone in the non-material areas and very suspicious of the common sense areas. So that time, which is a quantitative device in western civilization, and Americans operate by the cloca very naturally, and one of the greatest jobs we had with Egyptians was yetting them to class on time and getting then to class on time and getting reports in on time, and this cane to a head when I taught the footnote.You can say this is a silly assignment to touch tho footnote to -gyptians, but it tool: no about the better part of the senester to yet across to them the idea that it really doesn't matter whether the author of the footnote, whether you end his name in a period or a comma. That's not important. That's not important. The important thing is that we agree as to what a footnote should be and then we follow the form that wo agree upon. I would tale a class of twenty-five students and say, "All right, we're going to put the author's name down and we are going to end it with a period, and we are going to put the title end we are going to underline it. We're going to put the place that it's published and we're going to put the date. We're going to separate then by a comma and put a period, etc." Then I'd give them a list of those factors and say "oh, write a footnote." I'd get twenty- five different versions of the footnote. I'd say "fine your version is as good as anybody else, but the point is wo agreed we'd do it this way.
How you do it that way and just sit there until you do it." They could not relate to the visual, to the pr